Turkey Science Experiment
This simple science experiment for November uses a couple common kitchen supplies:
- baking soda
- vinegar
- food coloring
- dish soap
- dish with lip
- water
- construction paper or craft foam – brown, orange, red
- google eyes
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November Science Experiment
Mix together baking soda, several squirts of dish soap, and as much water as it takes to make a ball and keep it’s shape.
Thanksgiving Activities
Seperate your baking soda into seperate containers and use food coloring to make whatever color turkey feathers you would like. We opted for some nice Autumn colors of red, orange, and yellow.
Turkey Activities
Shape the baking soda mixture into feather shapes and put in semi-circle around top half of plate. Make sure to alterante colors and leaves space in between them. Again, be as creative as you like in the colors of your turkey feathers.
Now make a construction paper turkey out of brown cricles, orange feet / beak, red wattle, and google eyes. Place on plate on top of the endge of the feathers.
Turkey Activities for Preschoolers
Now comes the fun science part. You are gonig to use pipettes, squirt bottle, etc. to put drops of vinegar on the feathers.
HINT: As kids what will happen before you start.
Thanskgiving Activities for Preschoolers
As you add vinegar (an acid) to the baking soda feathers (a base) a chemical reaction occurs – they make carbon dioxide. CO2 is a gas so the vinegar litterally melts the baking soda into gas.
Baking Soda and Vinegar Reaction
Kids go nuts over this super simle, but educational activity!
November Activities for Preschoolers
You will see some fun bubbling from the dish soap and all you will be left with on the plate is the food coloring and vinegar.
CRANBERRY SPY JUICE
With cranberries and baking soda, you can create invisible messages that will be revealed to friendly eyes and self-destruct before your enemies have a chance to read them. You’ll see how some pigments in fruit can change color when they’re exposed to an acid or a base. *I discovered that some paper will turn blue in cranberry juice, so test the type of paper you want to use by first dipping a small piece it in the cranberry juice (before you start writing messages!) It should turn pink, not blue. Otherwise, you won’t be able to see your message!
We made Spy Juice on Kare11 Sunrise News a few years ago. Click here to watch.
You’ll need
-half a bag of cranberries
-water
-baking soda
-printer paper.
-a homemade pen: To write your message, you’ll also want to find a small paintbrush, Q-tip, or something else with an absorbent tip. We had the best luck using cake-pop sticks or cotton swabs cut in half (non-cotton end) as pens.
Have an adult or teenager boil the cranberries in about three cups of water for 15 or 20 minutes. Be sure to put a lid on the pan, since the small pockets of air that help cranberries float can make them explode as they cook. If you listen, you’ll hear some of the them popping! Crush the cooked berries and push the liquid through a sieve or colander to collect the concentrated cranberry juice. Most cranberry juice from the grocery store is diluted with water, corn syrup and other juices and won’t work as well!
Let the juice cool and pour it into a casserole dish or cake pan that the paper you’re writing your messages on will fit into. If your cranberry juice seems thick and syrupy, add a little water (maybe half a cup.) It has to have enough water in it so that it will soak into the paper!
To make your invisible ink, add a few teaspoons of baking soda to about 1/3 cup of warm water and dissolve it as well as you can. Don’t worry if you can still see some baking soda. Using your homemade writing tool, use the baking soda solution to write a message on your paper. It may take a little practice, so don’t get frustrated. You’ll get the hang of it!
Let your message air dry, or speed things up with a blow dryer.
To reveal your message, float and then submerge your paper in the cranberry juice and see what happens!
The science behind the fun:
Cranberries contain pigments called anthocyanins (an-tho-SY-a-nins), which give them their bright color. In nature, these pigments attract birds and other animals to fruit. This is important because animals eat the berries and spread plants seeds from one place to another.
These pigments, called flavanoids, change color when they come in contact with acids and bases. Cranberry juice is very acidic, and the pigment is red in acids. When you add it to a base, it turns purple or blue. Baking soda is a base, so your baking soda message will turn blue when it comes into contact with the pigments in the cranberry juice. Eventually, when enough cranberry juice soaks into the paper, it will dilute the baking soda and make the paper acidic, turning the pigment back to red and your message will disappear!
There are over 300 kinds of anthocyanins which are found in many fruits and vegetables including blueberries, red cabbage, grapes and blueberries. Scientists think they may have many health benefits and some researchers are even making organic solar cells using flavanoids!
Enrichment: What other juices can you use to reveal secret messages? What else could you use as ink? If you use lemon juice as ink, does it turn a different color?
Try making your own recipe for spy juice! I’d love to hear how red cabbage works! Check out my red cabbage litmus paper experiment to find out how to make red cabbage juice.
Caeli's Words 
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